Witherspoon Goes Under the Bridge

Reese Witherspoon’s Type A Films is developing Under the Bridge, based on Rebecca Godfrey’s true-crime account of a brutal high school murder. Thirteen helmer Catherine Hardwicke is in talks to direct the movie.

There’s no word yet on whether Witherspoon will star in “Bridge,” which will chronicle the 1997 killing of high school student Reena Virk in a small British Columbia town and the ensuing investigation and prosecution.

Variety says Godfrey, who’s from the same area, returned to her hometown to research the eight high schoolers who were charged in the case, investigating the cliques at the group’s well-off school as well as the life of Virk, the daughter of Indian immigrants. Two of the students were convicted in 2005.

Type A has bought both film rights to the book and life rights to Godfrey’s story, with the possibility of the author herself becoming a character in the pic.